Are educational institutions upholding rules against student welfare?

Educational institutions need to have rules in place to watch students' behaviour within their premises. The rules, no doubt, define a school or a college or a university. It is a bonded duty of an institution to frame rules and regulations to regulate and boost both academic and moral conduct of its students.

The students of any institution are bound to follow the rules of the institution they are studying in. And that is how they fulfill their duties towards that institution. However, an educational institution too has its duties to be fulfilled towards its students. It has to set aside its rigid rules and pay heed to the genuine issues of a student due to which he/she could not attend classes or write exams or write internal tests or attend an important academic event.

Let us take an example from the bollywood film '3 Idiots'. There is an engineering student who is not able to finish his project within a given period of time and pleads the Dean of the college to extend the deadline a bit. The Dean is very strict and does not extend the deadline. Further, the Dean calls that boy's parents to inform them that their son is not doing well in studies and he would not be allowed to write exams. The impact of the call? The engineering aspirant commits suicide.

The aforementioned film went on to become one of the highest earning films ever in the history of Indian cinema. However, the message has hardly been received by us; rather, we have hardly understood the intensity of that scene in the film. Students have not stopped committing suicide. They are sacrificing their precious lives either because of illogical cut throat competition or due to rules and regulations which do not give them a second chance.

The suicide case of Sushant Rohilla

As the whole nation was gearing up to celebrate the 70th independence day, Sushant Rohilla, a bright 3rd year student of Amity Law School, IP University, Noida chose to commit suicide rather than living with the humiliation of losing a chance to write exams. Sushant is the recent addition to the list of students who committed suicide due to the rigid rules of educational institutions. According to a friend of Sushant, the deceased could not secure 75% attendance because of his foot injury. He was debarred for the unintended poor attendance.

Sushant was a budding talent in the field of law. Taking another chance to sit for the exams next semester or year is no big deal, but getting debarred causes an irreparable damage on the minds of studious students like Sushant. That is exactly what happened. Sushant could not understand why he was punished for no mistake of his. It was a severe blow to him and his dreams built on the foundation of his excellent academic performance.

Everyone should be treated equally

It is high time the educational institutions with rigid rules and regulations to rethink about the same and revamp them. Rules are there to teach discipline to students, not to harm them or their personality. They should not hinder their personality development. Rules are made to treat all the students equally. However, Amity Law School was lenient in the case of a student who could not secure the required percentage of attendance as she was busy preparing for Miss India contest.

Sushant, on the other hand, had produced medical certificates related to his foot injury and tried as much as possible to attend classes. Yet, he could not reach the required percentage of attendance. This kind of arbitrary conduct of any educational institution is objectionable. So, it is not a bad idea to have rules in place, but it is very important to see if the rules are benefiting the meritorious students or pushing them towards suicide.